Apple's responsibility as a superpower

Apple has decreed that Flash must die and developers everywhere have shown up with shovels to dig its grave. Now, I’m no dear friend of Flash and I think the energy that is being poured into improving HTML5 on account of its future demise is wonderful for the web. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about Apple’s demonstration of might.

Today we cheer because Flash is every Real Web Developer™’s favorite piñata and what’s more fun than seeing a giant bat it around. It of course doesn’t help that Adobe is a big, stodgy software company with plenty of dysfunctional products. They play the role of a sympathetic victim poorly.

My fear is that Apple will take the expedited death of Flash as an invitation to play king maker with increased abandon. Apple is fighting everyone on all fronts. They’re on the outs with Sony, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, and an endless list of other companies. What technology or technique is next on the hit list? (Think what happened or didn’t to Blue-ray, USB3, Java).

The fact that this is just a general sense of unease about what Apple-the-superpower might do next is exactly why this is so harmful. Once you start flexing your muscles, everyone will be fearing they’re next.

Ironically though (I am a fan of you guys) but don’t your critics think the same things about you? You’re dangerous according to the people who think differently from you. I see your point but in reality – the strong stances they take – isn’t this what you yourself advise? If everyone liked what you were doing then clearly you are doing something wrong right? :)

But so far – Apple’s championed standards and I also think that despite all of the upset about how they manage the app store. You can’t argue that this is disruptive for large software companies and has helped the independent developer leverage the playing field very much. You can create a game and have the exact same distribution as EA. I think that is stellar. So two sides to all coins.

Apple doesn’t have that much control either. I mean they are abandoning firewire right? I am not as skeptical as you – but I see your point.

David

on 01 Nov 10

Apple can’t kill Flash on their own. Although they can certainly expedite its demise.

Michael

on 01 Nov 10

I don’t think this is anything to worry about. This is not Apple crushing a technology at the top of its game, aside from its video capabilities Flash on the web has been more or less redundant for a while now. Apple are merely speeding up the inevitable.

Paul

on 01 Nov 10

To be fair, the same can be said of Microsoft (in the 90s) and Google too. Companies will always do what’s in their best interest, even if that interest coincides with other potentially more altruistic efforts.

I wonder if a degree of this has to do with the very personal face Apple has put on their efforts – namely, Steve Jobs’s open letters and emails to consumers. Although, Eric Schmidt has been making some pretty big comments too.

Please. Apple is pragmatic, like most businesses its size. Flash is a CPU hog, buggy, and error prone. Apple wants maximum battery life for its products, and the least amount of customer support hassles. It makes perfect sense to drop support for Flash, given the circumstances. If Flash was a better behaved piece of software, this whole thing would be a non-issue.

Flash

Very interesting post. There is something to be said for an integrated system…though I don’t think it’s Apple’s responsibility to kill all competition. Who cares if Flash exists? If it’s a terrible technology it will pass. It makes no sense to me to even carry out this war.

Chris Jacob

I read some recent tweets by @thijs that made some good points re: Thanks to Apple’s “closed” iOS the future of the Web is going to be wide open.

- Would Adobe be demoing Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools and HTML5 timeline animation editors if there was an iOS Flash plugin?

- Would over 50% of the web video now be available for playback using the HTML5 video element if there was an iOS Flash plugin?

- Would Microsoft have “shifted” strategy if they would have been able to get a Silverlight plugin on iOS?

I appreciate Apple picking fights and making tough decisions when the result is positive – i.e. rocket boosting HTML5 acceptance.

I don’t think the market will let them bully us into things we don’t want / don’t need… we want change, and I’m just glad they have the balls to make it happen.

Nick

on 01 Nov 10

I am still unsure as to why people want Flash to die. I agree that Flash shouldn’t be the only way to distribute video or create specific types of interactive content, but die?

Here’s my take: Flash is a petrie dish.

Demand for web video was created by Flash. Not because Flash is amazing, but because it operates in a container.

With HTML or JS you are limited to it’s ability. Have an awesome idea for a web app that involves a webcam or a microphone? If you cannot create the demand for such a product, the standards won’t embody motivation to implement it because it hasn’t been deemed necessary. Video on the web has been happening for a long time, and we just get in the last few years.

Flash might need to be more open-source, perhaps more integrated with typical development. But die? I think it is bad for the web if Flash were dead.

Andy

on 01 Nov 10

Apple generally chooses Good User Experience over Bad User Experience. That’s the main reason behind no iOS Flash (that, and not wanting to give Adobe the keys to the iOS App Store castle).

Apple originally adopted USB on the iMac because it offered a superior user experience over the alternatives of parallel, serial, ADB, etc. I presume it feels that USB 3 is not currently of a sufficiently high user experience to be worthy of promotion to its customers.

As for Blu-Ray I believe Apple thinks that the superior user experience is a future where physical media of all kinds have gone by the wayside. I have to say, on this I totally agree. I actually expect them to drop optical drives from MacBook Pros in the next revision….

So if you don’t want to be ‘Steved’ the answer is to always promote a good user experience for your hardware and software. That HAS to be a good thing for the consumer, surely.

Many of the companies you list are actually partners with Apple. Apple partnered with Motorolla to produce the ROKR, the first ‘iTunes phone’. Motorolla dropped the ball on that one, so Apple went it alone to build the iPhone, ate Mot’s lunch, and in spite Mot rolled out a bunch of troll patents.

I’m far more concerned about Google and Facebook than anything Apple’s currently doing.

David: Expedite its demise and create a bunch of unnecessary hate in the process.

Jim Jeffers: As long as you can motivate your bold decisions. I think some of apples decisions are motivated pretty vaguely.

Dar

on 01 Nov 10

It is a bit disturbing, however, like other posts here, I don’t think Apple can kill anything unless there is already a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with whatever the current thing that has drawn Apple’s wrath.

I note that even after all this time and all of the flash 10.1 hype, we still are not seeing universal flash deployment on mobile devices.

Joel

on 01 Nov 10

@josh Flash is generally as buggy, cpu intensive, and error prone as the developer writes his app to be. It is like every other rich web technology out there.

Proclaiming Flash’s death is premature. Regardless of the Apple fist shaking towards the heavens, it provides a solid ubiquitous VM that eliminates many problems related to creating applications in the browser.

I suspect we’ll see Flash on iOS devices in the future as Adobe optimizes.

Ankush

on 01 Nov 10

As much as I agree with the sentiment of your post, what ever happened to “let the market decide”? I see Flash today much like I saw Internet Explorer in its hay-day. It’s a technology that’s caused enough frustration for both users and developers. How else did Firefox, Opera and WebKit find immense market share? HTML5 is just an extension of this phenomenon.

Also, Apple’s incentives to do away with Flash have more to do with control over their own platform. The side-effect is that developers are following suite because they want their websites and video visible to iOS users. But the other positive side-effect is that these sites and videos become much more accessible to platforms that are waiting around for Adobe to port and stabilize Flash – including Android, Blackberry, webOS, TiVo, Wii, etc.

As long as Apple comes from a place of improving the customer experience and not pushing their own proprietary solutions then they are ok with me.
Had Apple tried to replace Flash with a proprietary technology that would have been something to be alarmed about, instead they pushed an open one thats going to make the web a better place for everyone, even Adobe. Adobe is poised to make a killing if they release the first professional tool for animating HTML as easily as Flash and they are in the best position to do it.
As far as Blu Ray, I think they see the writing on the wall with optical drives and are moving away from that.

David

on 01 Nov 10

This is a strange argument, coming from you. Apple has determined supporting Flash is contrary to their interests, so they don’t allow it in any iOS devices, and appear to be moving away from it with Macs as well. They put their money and their products where their mouth is. If Flash (or USB3, or desktop Java) are as valuable as their supporters think they are, then Apple’s competitors will benefit to the extent that they support these technologies, and Apple will suffer for betting against them. Developers will vote with their attention, and customers with their money. The market will sort it out.

The sympathy for Flash seems out of keeping with your views on VC money. If you disapprove of VCs throwing money at flashy but unproven tech firms, I would think you’d applaud Apple for saying the emperor Flash has no clothes, and betting against it so publicly, and so successfully.

I believe you’re attributing a lot more power to Apple than they actually have. Apple can’t physically force people to not use Flash or any other product.

The good news is that individuals will decide whether or not Flash remains important to them. This is how the success or failure of all goods and services are (or at least should be) determined.

Anonymous Coward

on 01 Nov 10

@37signals

Apple has NEVER partnered with companies well.

Look at Borland, who was the only company creating developer tools for Mac when no one was anymore and then one day about 6 years ago, Jobs gets on stage and announce OS X – says all of the past developer tools suck and that everyone now needs to use Xcode.

Also look at Microsoft, who literally saved Apple from bankruptcy by purchasing like 1/3 of all of it’s assets and injected $150 million into the business to then only be repaid by Steve Jobs creating the very contraversal “PC guy” ads that were a direct attach on Mac.

An interesting video goes back to Jobs announcing Microsoft partnership

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&feature=player_embedded

Anonymous Coward

on 01 Nov 10

Also keep in that it was Microsoft that brought the following to Mac (NOT Apple themselves):

Java (yes, Microsoft brought Java to Mac, see video)
The most standards browser at the time, IE for Mac (don’t get this confused with IE for Windows. IE for Mac was literally years ahead of it’s time on CSS and other standards support)
Office compatibility. People often forget how DIFFICULT life use to be when you couldn’t open simple Word doc or Excel document on a Mac. This was a huge problem that Microsoft brought to Apple who at the time had only like 1% of the market share

Anonymous Coward

on 01 Nov 10

- Java (yes, Microsoft brought Java to Mac, see video)

- The most standards browser at the time, IE for Mac (don’t get this confused with IE for Windows. IE for Mac was literally years ahead of it’s time on CSS and other standards support)

- Office compatibility. People often forget how DIFFICULT life use to be when you couldn’t open simple Word doc or Excel document on a Mac. This was a huge problem that Microsoft brought to Apple who at the time had only like 1% of the market share

Gerald Irish

on 01 Nov 10

Make no mistake, there is definitely an element of a personal grudge against Adobe behind Steve Jobs’ banning of Flash. Sure, Flash has its negatives but for Apple to outright ban it on iOS is a bit over the top. At least give users the option to install it.

Apple can and will be just as evil as Microsoft given enough power. That’s why I’m glad there is still competition and the FTC to keep Apple honest.

@Chris Papadopoulos
Well, they can physically force everyone who has an iOS device. Now sure, that does not mean that those folks won’t use Flash on their laptops or desktops, but it surely has hurt Flash as a platform to some extent.

However, I believe that all this has triggered some very positive developments. Adobe finally has started to deliver on the promises of its Open Screen Project while the adoption of HTML5/CSS3 has accelerated. And if you consider the announcements at the MAX conference, Adobe is increasingly serious about making Flash less CPU-hungry (hardware acceleration, native 3D etc.)
That’s good for everyone.

jack

on 01 Nov 10

When folks complain about Apple throwing their weight around all I can think is how the same folks used to say that Apple is irrelevant and will be out of business so don’t buy their products. Microsoft had 98% market share for 20 yrs. Apple didn’t whine about it, they just innovated their way back to the top. I think you should tell the folks that worry about Apple to start innovating again and stop complaining.

Chess

on 01 Nov 10

I guess you could say that Apple is an ‘opinionated’ company.

Joel H

on 01 Nov 10

So long as YouTube uses Flash - and they have announced they intend to continue - I’ll have it installed.

TWAndrews

on 01 Nov 10

Given the list of adversaries that you mentioned, I don’t worry too much about Apple taking over the world. They can’t fight everyone and win on everything.

Killing Flash is probably good. Between Apple and Oracle, Java’s going to take a hit too, but hard to see how they do much beyond that.

Apple is a trendsetter, not a superpower. They do what they think is best for them. Plenty of people where probably mad about Apple removing the diskette drive back in the days, same thing now with Java and Flash. One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes is (he took it from Wayne Gretzky): “The important thing isn’t to be where the puck is, but to know where it will be” (or something like that). And that is what Apple is doing.

When Google rolled out free Google Maps and navigation apps, they were directly attacking companies like Garmin and TomTom

Now frankly, it is reasonable to sympathize with many companies whose paid offerings are under attack by “free” products, but would you ask Google to recognize itself as a “superpower” and stop killing GPS navigation companies ?

Tomas

on 01 Nov 10

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

James

on 01 Nov 10

Who the hell wrote this? Glenn Beck? “Be afraid of what might come tomorrow! It could be your death!”

Seriously, this is kinda weak sauce.

Rocky Erwin

on 01 Nov 10

I’d rather Apple flex their might upon us then any other such company we have seen yet.

uhoh

on 01 Nov 10

I just don’t get this article. Apple didn’t “decree” anything. It made a decision not to put a certain software product on iOS and it offered cogent, carefully considered reasons for its decision. You can disagree with decisions or with the reasons. Feel free.

Your claim, I suppose, is that because the company is powerful this represents a de facto decree. Yes, the company is powerful. But so were the reasons for its decisions about Flash. Yes, decisions by the powerful have consequences. Duh. But their decisions are not binding on us. Look up “decree” in the dictionary.

Richard Henry

on 01 Nov 10

Do Apple ship every other item of Mac software on their platform? They don’t? Then why are they obligated to ship with Flash preinstalled?

It’s up to Adobe to make their own future, not Apple. Perhaps that’s why Adobe recently unveiled Adobe Edge, and a Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool.

Flash

ViewRoyal

Paranoid much? Apple is NOT causing the demise of Flash, nor is it a “superpower” (with less than 5% of the PCs worldwide, and even less of the cell phones worldwide).

If anyone is causing Flash to be dropped in favor of HTML5, it’s Adobe.

For years Adobe has done nothing to improve Flash, or to make it less of a processor & RAM hog. Apple is just being outspoken about Flash, and saying the same things that everyone else in the world knows already.

The death of Flash is long overdue, and we should be thanking Apple for standing up and speaking the truth about it, rather than sitting in silence like the rest of the technology sector.

steffenjobbs

on 01 Nov 10

It does appear as though Apple is trying to kill Flash, but I believe that we should all look to universal acceptance of HTML5 in the future. Apple really took a hard stance by not allowing Flash to run on iOS devices, but I think that Flash experience will be marginal for those that use hand-held devices. I don’t feel current hand-held devices are powerful enough to efficiently run Flash code designed to run on desktop computers.

Steve Jobs says Flash is buggy and subject to security breaches. I don’t know if he’s lying or not. It’s certainly possible he is. Maybe he really just doesn’t want to be tied to Adobe and their lackadaisical attitude. I think he banned Flash because he didn’t want his Genius staff to be annoyed trying to solve Flash problems. Apple wants to be in full control of their mobile platform and anything that runs on it. I don’t see how there’s anything wrong with that from the company’s standpoint. If potential buyers don’t like it then they should buy another company’s products. Yet, it seems that all those iOS device users keep coming back for more iOS products, so the lack of Flash can’t be having that great an effect on sales. Well, at least not enough to be seriously harming Apple’s revenue growth from what I’m observing.

a

on 01 Nov 10

It’s actually spelled “Blu-ray”.

Mike

on 01 Nov 10

Apple is doing us all a favour. Flash was good in the day for PCs but that day is on the way out. Not to mention that it is not a workable solution for mobile devices from what I read.

Considering that Flash is such a unique product, it’s easy to incorrectly infer what S. Jobs is always saying. For example, whenever Jobs refers to HTML5, his message is clearly attacking Flash (as a plug-in) but when you consider Apple’s blanket ban of 3rd party tools from the app store, they’re actually hurting a whole lot of other industries.

Flash as a mobile phone application may or may not produce stellar results but in the process of preventing Flash from entering the app store domain, Job’s has also managed to kill any other potential competitor (AIR, Titianium Appcelerator, Silverlight, Java, etc). Sure, I will kindly play along with the argument that X-Code & Objective-C may (currently) be the best tools to build for devices with limited battery life but I will also suggest that Job’s was protecting thousands of iPhone developers from becoming undervalued. For example, if you were a entrepreneur looking to release a Minimum Viable Product and determine whether an idea is any good, would you rather pay for a $200/hr Objective-C developer or a Flash/Silverlight/Java/Titanium developer for a fraction of the cost?

It’s always fun to think of Job’s as an ecosystem manager. In the case of Flash, Jobs is not only protecting his X-Code builders from fair-weathered competitors but doing it under the pretense that it’s all Adobe’s fault. In the mean time, he’s also keeping his product line pure from un-X-code apps that may hinder his vertically aligned business.

Ryan

on 01 Nov 10

Like 37Signals, Apple is an opinionated company and it reflects in their products. As many readers have remarked, 37S preaches this from their books, classes, conference appearances, and blog and make a pretty penny doing so. Apple takes risks and the public and blogosphere usually show animosity when the company takes sides on an issue.

With regard to Adobe and Flash, Apple made the decision to remove a single Adobe offering from their platform for a couple of likely reasons (1) the existing Flash player likely didn’t work on iOS (it doesn’t fully work on any phones yet), and (2) Flash will eat your battery and cause heat issues (ever hear the fan rev up when you’re watching a video – A mobile phone or tablet doesn’t have space for large fans and heat sinks). Apple is a company that takes a problem and solves it in a different way – whether you like it or not is your personal opinion. Take for example the removable battery problem. The core issue is that a battery doesn’t last long enough. What did Apple do to solve the problem? They made their electronics smaller so that a battery could encompass the majority of the device. The historic answer to the problem is to sell extra batteries to the consumer so they can swap them out. Now consumers have more charging logistics to deal with (can’t we have devices for grown-ups?) It’s an opinionated trade-off, and I feel strongly that people are happy in the long-term with long-lasting batteries. The same concepts apply for Flash – the core issue is to watch videos. How it’s done doesn’t matter to the user at large. Sure, some restaurants love to use Flash to show their delicious food with animations, but again, there is a modern solution for that – CSS3 Animations. Like the statistics show, web technologies are evolving at an incredibly rapid pace because of this singular decision and we all benefiting from it. Now we have highly optimized browsers and Microsoft has been forced to care.

One should be careful interpreting competition as unreasonable fighting. Motorola, HTC, Apple, and many other device manufacturers are simply doing what needs to be done to play defense in a the broken system of U.S. patents and position themselves to succeed.

With regard to Java, it’s on the outs regardless of whether Apple decides to spend a ton of time making platform applications look good on their OS (something Java was never good at). There is a reason many new languages (Scala, Groovy, Clojure, JRuby) are gaining popularity on the JVM – the cross platform nature of the JVM is great, but the Java language itself is dated and mired in its inability to innovate. I think 37S has proven this point in its use of Rails over Java.

I have not fear for the future when a company takes a core issue, is dissatisfied with the available solutions, and designs something that they believe is better. Isn’t this how 37Signals designs? Say “No” to the customer? Break it down to the fundamentals? Remove the cruft that adds no value?

Jason Vagner

on 01 Nov 10

...Except, Apple has given very good reasons for their move. If it was arbitrary, or capricious, I’d sympathize with your point. As things stand, I don’t.

Beau OHara

on 01 Nov 10

I think (could be wrong) what David is getting at is not the specific cases of Flash and Java. But more generally, what will Apple do with its growing market power?

Since the introduction of OS X Apple has straddled the open source and commercial software worlds with deft hand, while working closely with other commercial vendors. As a result they have become the darling of many developers who want to use a relatively open platform, that is beautiful and easy to use. Apple created something amazing that existed between Windows & Linux, allowing the choice of both open and proprietary technologies.

If Apple pushes to far in the direction they headed will their core values still resonate with people in the same way. Will the technology passionate feel the need to move away from Apple if they increasingly restrict their platform to things only invented in Cupertino.

Apple was a great underdog. Lets see what they do as the gorilla.

Anonymous Coward

on 01 Nov 10

Also look at Microsoft, who literally saved Apple from bankruptcy by purchasing like 1/3 of all of it’s assets and injected $150 million into the business to then only be repaid by Steve Jobs…

Meh. If you build excellent products you have nothing to worry about. If you don’t, you don’t deserve to stay on top.

Jbelkin

on 01 Nov 10

Apple makes BUSINESS decisions based on what’s next … Whether thats adding an ethernet port, launching on an online store (iTunes), dropping hardware (diskette drive, optical drive) ... Apple is pretty much ALWAYS right … It might inconvenience 1% of users but bottom line, it really doesn’t affect functionality for 99% of users … Exact same with flash and why it scares adobe. Flash is nearly 100% tipped for developers & sites. It’s a shortcut to creating animation and flashiness (style over substance)... But u know that and that’s why websites have an opt out, why is there an opt out of HTML page option if it weren’t annoying like spam email? ... Flash video allows better tracking over H.264 within HTML … And speaking of tracking, flash offers undeletable cookies … And of course, adobe sells it in a $3k software suite … Flash is like red light cameras – they call it safety but really it’s about the $800 per violation.

Doug Petrosky

on 01 Nov 10

There are some people who need a history lesson!

1) Office first shipped for the mac in 1986. The graphic versions of Word and Excel were created on the Mac not the other way around.
2) Steve already stopped the bleeding at apple before MS invested 150M in a company with no debt and 500M in the bank!
3) Microsoft didn’t do it out of love, they did it as part of a settlement to get access to numerous patents of Apple’s they had infringed upon.
4) YouTube already runs in HTML5!
5) Java for Mac? Who cares? But, for the last decade it has been made by Apple.

Flash was far from the first web video standard (QuickTime and RealPlayer predate it) and was never even close to the best (actually quite the opposite) but they did convince everyone to install their crappy software so for years we have used the worst possible solution because it worked on more devices. Apple is simply changing that equation so that a good video standard can arise.

It should be noted that Flash has improved more in the past 3 years because of this disagreement than it had in the past decade. Flash on the Mac has sucked 10 fold what it does on windows (and it sucks there too) and Adobe tried to force a load of suck on to the iPhone. Apple said no and Adobe lost.

Apple Abandons dead and dyeing technology all the time (even it’s own) and that makes some people uncomfortable, but it doesn’t make Apple evil.

Jon

on 01 Nov 10

Adobe is a big, stodgy software company with plenty of dysfunctional products.

Jon

on 01 Nov 10

“Adobe is a big, stodgy software company with plenty of dysfunctional products.” Plenty of dysfunctional products? Like Photoshop, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, InDesign, Acrobat and Premier? These products are the standards for developing modern media, and for a damn good reason. If you’re fishing for call-outs that news outlets and Twitter users will pick up, you should at least try for even a modicum of accuracy.

@Jon, You think the quality of Creative Suite justifies Adobe’s position? Laughable. Everyone uses Adobe because Adobe bought all of its real competitors.

Gary O.

on 01 Nov 10

If Apple is looking to kill off Flash, does that make Apple into Ming the Merciless?
I’m sure that manufacturers of floppy drives weren’t happy when Apple stopped using their products, either. It doesn’t mean that outdated or inferior technology should be carried forward out of inertia. Perhaps Apple should be thanked for having the guts to innovate, rather than following the herd. Wait… they don’t need to be thanked. Having incredibly successful products, increasing market share in laptops, phones and desktops, taking the tablet market by storm, $55 BILLION in the bank and an ever-increasing stock price is thanks enough, both for them and their stockholders.

I think that if this is what they tout (“that Flash needs to die”) then they need to provide or highlight a solution that is as easy and robust as the Flash Platform of tools.

Apple’s stance is that Flash always crashes (untrue?).I think its bad coding,etc that leads to slow unresponsive Flash. I really feel its because its the variety of Flash games out there that would trounce the Games Store. This is why Apple is threatened. HTML5 is so new that we dont have a robust way to replicate what we have in Flash yet.

Apple hasn’t and will never be able to “kill” Flash. Their mouth is big enough, but their user base is most certainly not. Android outsells iPhone by 44% and growing every quarter (http://bit.ly/cVfhtZ), Google TV / YouView and similar TV interfaces all have hardware accelerated Flash support alongside HTML5.

Add that to the GPU support coming to Flash next year and native Linux and 64-bit plugins and it’s clear that HTML5 “eclipsing” it is several years, and some significant toolsets away, by which time it will have evolved again. Adobe should have bought this kind of power to FlashPlayer years ago, and more fool them for not doing so, but if I thank Apple for anything it’s for waking them up and making FlashPlayer change as rapidly as they are doing so now with it. If anything Apple has merely increased the importance it will ultimately have, at least for the next 5 years. Beyond that maybe we’ll all be building kick-ass html5 apps. While arguing about html6 specs.

sfenerule

on 01 Nov 10

If it’s true that the web perceives censorship as damage and routes around it, proprietary runtimes are definitely a kind of damage. Happily at this moment in web evolution there’s one manufacturer who’s big enough to corral two of these runtimes in one move.

With the clamor of the Feature Checklist Magisterium, vendors will install these mobile runtimes, but can those vendors answer the question ”who is the customer?” better than Apple? Wariness about Apple is warranted, but for which of these vendors is the user more at the top of the experience pyramid?

Brian

on 01 Nov 10

What an incredibly idiotic article. Look, you admit yourself that Flash is weak. Then you cry like Apple is a big bully. They are not. Others are TOUTING FLASH as an advantage.

Adobe has given up on Apple since about 1998, and never looked back. They even RAN ADS TELLING GRAPHICS PEOPLE TO SWITCH TO INTEL. Adobe has not put any effort into the Mac in about as much time. Adobe has NOT DELIVERED on mobile flash. It’s not running anywhere well.

You are a total Fanboy. USB3? You have no idea what you are talking about. If it had not been for Apple publishing the firewire spec, then there would not have been a USB1, or USB2 (still slower and less capable than firewire 400) years later.

We cheer because we want to see the BEST technology live on, and not cry for a lot of weak developers who can’t bother to learn how to write a DECENT application!

Scott

on 01 Nov 10

In my opinion Apple still has a few more years of payback to dole out for being pounded down by the competition from late 80’s to late 90’s. The world continues to crave technology and people want the best. Make something better than Apple and we’ll buy it.

Adobe has been pissing on the Mac OS for years and pulled a nice end-run around QuickTime by sticking video codecs in Flash. Too bad they became contented with dominating the desktop, and sucking users dry on upgrades.

Synth

on 01 Nov 10

Apple isn’t killing Flash, Flash killed its own darn self. Apple is simply not going to lift a finger to help it live.

Seriously, if Flash on mobile devices is so awesome, then all of Apple’s competitors will have this huge advantage. If it isn’t so awesome, then they won’t. A year from now it will be pretty obviously which is the case.

I strongly advise you to watch the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”.
Very instructive…
it clearly shows what kind of lunatic Jobs is…
Funny thing, I watched it just about a couple of weeks ago, but I already knew what kind of lonely, bitter, aggressive man he is.
His “keynotes”, insulting to other companies who made and are making the history of web and it, clearly say it all about his disturbed personality.
Flash will never die, altough Steve would love it, so that he could make 1$ even on Pong or Space Invaders.

Steve Nagel

@Filippo

That was a MOVIE you know. Are we now basing our decisions on a FICTIONAL ADAPTATION? It’s NOT EVEN A DOCUMENTARY. Geez.

Keynotes are AWESOME and HURRAH for the IDEA that pong or space invaders on my iPod/iPhone/iPad SHOULD cost about a buck! Aren’t there enough of us all for that to represent a profit?

Anyone railing against the App store has NO IDEA what they are talking about. It’s a gold mine if you have any decent programming chops whatsoever.

Adobe had nothing whatsoever to do with the history of the Web. And Flash was an end run around Quicktime, which everyone ripped off, most notably Microsoft (they were caught red handed and Apple wisely FORCED them to ‘invest’ a paltry $150M as a show of faith back when all the tards were saying Apple was ‘doomed’ and ‘beleagured’.

They were better off then than Microsoft is now.

Jose

on 01 Nov 10

Good riddance to proprietary, crappy web software.

Nothing to fear but fear itself.

Adam Sentz

on 01 Nov 10

Doesn’t Apple base this type of decision on what they believe consumers actually want? People really love iPhones and iPads, but they wouldn’t be up to snuff if it ran Flash so it doesn’t. It’s not like Apple made the decision to create those products because they wanted to kill Flash. Do you really think that Adobw would be in this position if they’d delivered a version of Flash that ran well on mobile like they’ve been promising for years?

I think you are over-reacting. The fact is Apple does produce amazing products that are becoming used more and more. Instead of bowing to pressure and supporting everything under the sun, they are continuing to operate their business just like they always have.

And I think that’s genius.

Sure they may be vocal about their dislikes of products like Flash. But they understand the consumer better than Adobe. If people or companies have issues with Apple’s stance then they should be building products that are amazing and setting the tempo themselves.

For years everyone had to design it to fit with Microsoft and there were complaints and lawsuits toward them at all times. Apple is just getting noticed more now, but they aren’t changing who they are or why consumers love their products.

So… if it scares you, then build something better.

mark

on 01 Nov 10

This is dumb. The first time Steve Jobs was asked about Flash on the iPhone, he said we needed something between Flash Lite (didn’t run much of web Flash) and Flash (too slow on mobile CPUs). He waited. Nothing happened. Then Adobe employees started talking about Apple not letting their (slow) software onto the iPhone, exciting the interweb echo-chamber. Then Steve responded. Last we heard from Steve this year at the D conference was “we’ll see.” Everyone is still waiting for a version that runs well.

The media, Adobe, and the Internet created the “war.” There is no Flash on iOS simply because it still sucks, and Apple is certain that other stuff will get there before Flash stops sucking.

Stacy

on 01 Nov 10

It’s pretty amazing that people believe everything that Steve Jobs says. His actions are politically motivated, and most of his tech talk is just a cover.

You see the big boys have always had their heal on Steve’s neck since the beginning. The red marks are still there and still throbs as he tries to sleep at night. This is history younger folks need to know about. MS legally stoled his idea and made it Windows. He’s always had to kiss butt big-time for Adobe and others to bring their software to the Mac. His lips are still blue, concealed by makeup in everyday life.

And now it’s payback time. That’s what all of this is about. Has little to do with battery life, flash unstable, etc. Steve want to kick everybody in the balls that hurt him over the last 25 years. and that includes developers like us who would not write programs for his obviously superior computer.

Steve W

Is this a case of the tail wagging the dog, or the nose pointing the way?

Nathania Johnson

on 01 Nov 10

1. It’s not as if Adobe hasn’t had ample opportunity to improve Flash.

2. It’s not as if there isn’t ample opportunity for others to compete with Apple.

I’d be more concerned if Apple wasn’t doing this.

Walt French

on 01 Nov 10

Apple CAN’T kill Flash because Adobe beat ‘em to the punch.

Flash does not run on a single smartphone with less than a 1GHz processor or less than 1 GB of RAM. That means that ten years after Nokia put a browser into a phone package, Adobe has not managed to shoehorn Flash into the devices that 95% of mobile users have in their hands.

Totally nothing to do with Steve Jobs other than he apparently declined to jerk around his customers with false promises the way that Adobe has treated its developer and designer customers.

It’s ADOBE that rather immodestly and totally incorrectly has told its developers, “we’ll have Flash on a billion smartphones by 2009.” It’s ADOBE that keeps lying to its customers about future availability of Flash on WebOS, on WinPhone7, on BlackBerry.

Microsoft has just reached the same conclusion: there’s no way that behemoth has the resources to support Silverlight, a similar graphics-oriented plugin, on a dozen different mobile platforms.

By now, with Froyo on most of the new Android phones, we should start seeing some actual usage stats. But we haven’t, probably because Adobe would be embarrassed: even where their engineers have managed to get a Flash player working, users turn it off. (The profile of Android users doesn’t mesh very well with either lots of blinky ads or low-rent facebook games designed to steal your identity.)

Kind of amazing that only Apple is willing to speak the truth: Flash has grown to be a monstrosity that even Adobe can’t support properly.

Stephen

on 01 Nov 10

What happened to the blog at 37signals that used to be interesting and useful to read? It seems to declining about as quickly as the usefulness of Basecamp.

PS – You have a ™ symbol where you copied and pasted your smart quotes into your blog from some other program.

RF

on 01 Nov 10

IE 6 is Web developers’ favorite pinata. I’m very glad about all the work Apple’s doing with WebKit—don’t think Flash has much to do with it though. The right way to push technology forward is almost never to break backwards compatibility and dump an existing widely-used tech on the ground.

I have seen Apple invade other domains. There was a recent article I read at tp://is.gd/gAhXu, about publishing a book in the IBookstore. But I also have an engineering friend, working on the Amazon Kindle in California. They are a long way from folding. I would say Apple is a viable player, but don’t underestimate the competition.

Ryan

on 01 Nov 10

Apple killing flash and what they do next is nowhere near as worrying as Google’s attempts at shaping the web in a way that benefits them.

NotTellinYou

on 01 Nov 10

This has nothing to do with Apple throwing it’s weight but deciding it wasn’t going to allow ANYONE to lower the user experience on the iPhone. To Apple to get where they are in the mobile space they needed to be EXCEPTIONAL from the user’s standpoint. Apple knows from the crash reports it gets that FLash is one of the top, if not the top, cause of Safari crashes. Crashes that come at a frequency that just can’t be allowed on a mobile device. Apple has said OVER and OVER that if Adobe came to them with a version of Flash that worked they were open to seeing it.

Based upon Android reports…they still have a ways to go.

Merle

on 01 Nov 10

NotTellinYou hits the nail on the head. They need to have total control of the iPhone platform. At their will or whim they could lower the price of the iPhone and completely decimate Android. It’s that much better and always will be because they have control.

I think developers are shifting away from Apple. Consumers will eventually follow where the best software is.

Android is starting to kill iphone :>

Dale Right

on 01 Nov 10

Adobe simply needs better PR. They need to clear up 3 serious myths that Jobs and company are propagating.

These are:

1) Flash is just about video

2) Flash is some kind of closed, non-standard development enivornment that no one uses

3) Flash is not able to support touch-screen

1) If it’s on the web and it moves, chances are it’s Flash (you can always find out by simply right-clicking on the content). Flash is widely used on the web in non-video interactive media including web site development, e-learning, game development, vector graphic animation and online advertising. Heck, Flash is being used on arrival/departure displays at airports and tourist kiosks There is no other product on the market today that provides the capabilities for developers (and non-programmers alike) to quickly build cross-platform interactive sites, web apps and rich media content on the Mac AND PC platforms. With Flash It’s build once, deploy and not have to worry about browser compatibility (read: lacklustre support of HTML standards by browsers). Unless hell freezes over, the day IE, Safari, Firefox and others all support the same HTML standards will never come. It was Flash that put the death knell on “This site is best viewed with IE 6.0” that Mac users had to endure for years. Back then Macromedia (now of course Adobe) made things a little easier by ensuring a consistent cross-browser experience almost a decade ago. Flash has kept up, with support for databases, XML, javascript, CSS, graphics (gif, jpg, png), video encoding (including Apple’s own QuickTime) and many other standards.The SWF file format is public (royalty free )- any third party can support it in their own products.

2) Flash is a mature, robust development environment that has actually brought the web to life.There are not only legions of individual Flash developers out there (many of which are creatives as opposed to programmers). There are also legions of 3rd party companies providing Flash support and add ons. 1000s of companies rely on a healthy Flash market to survive.

If you know javascript, then you know actionscript. HTML 5 is promising (and very welcome). But there is no way it can provide as rich an experience as Flash can do today. To see some very cool examples of what people are doing with Flash, I urge you you to check out: http://www.thefwa.com

3) Hello Stevo, you’re dead wrong on this issue. Flash has supported touch now for a while. http://www.adobe.com/mobile/gallery/
Even though much of the content for mobile is still (non-touch) HTML based (maybe that’s why you include a browser with iPhone OS). Bottom line, Flash supports touch and of course app development (perhaps the real reason behind Apple’s stance).

Finally, I want people reading my rant to know that I am not affiliated with Adobe in any way. I’m actually a loyal Apple customer. I’m on my tenth Mac. I currently own an iMac 24”, Macbook Pro, iPhone and 2 ATVs. :-)

bbb

on 01 Nov 10

You people are worse than Tea Baggers. , with your “Apple will take over the world and we will all be their slaves… blah blah”.

HTML5 is not being improved “on account of” Flashes demise. It’s being improved like any other forefront technology. That’s just what forefront technologies do. But way to hype your tired regurgitated position.

maxfinis

on 01 Nov 10

David, I expected a more coherent and convincing argument from you. It doesn’t even make sense. You decry Flash and Adobe, and even say that their slow demise is justified, and yet you also decry Apple in fear that they’ll turn into a tyrant as a result. What would you have Apple do? You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Your logic doesn’t hold. It’s like saying that you’re glad that the god-awful 911’s 996 model has been replaced by the 997, but that now you’re afraid that the 998 will be a clunker. There’s danger in everything, but the biggest danger is inaction. Apple, right or wrong, has the balls to make a stand and bet their future on it. To me, that’s more honest, convincing, and inspirational than anything Adobe (or anyone else) has done recently. Give me a tyrant like that over the safe and apologetic mediocrity of Adobe any day.

What exactly would you have had Apple do regarding Flash? A closed and notoriously problematic third-party technology was ill-suited for the entirely new touch UI platform Apple had worked so on, so they endorsed an open and robust standards instead rather than propagate old problems to the new platform. Seems a bit of a reach to extrapolate from that a future Apple wielding technology-deciding power wantonly.

I’m not denying that power can corrupt, just that this particular instance provides any indication that Apple may abuse its power later.

Jeremy

on 02 Nov 10

Apple has been brilliant at innovating and disregarding irrelevant technology. Everyone wanted to say it, but Apple was the only big company with the balls. Flash is irrelevant. I don’t miss it, and I don’t miss the crashes.

Ole

on 02 Nov 10

5000 new Flash websites hit the net every day, there have never been so much Flash stuff on the net, and it’s rapidly increasing. Flash dead ? hmm… I don’t think so. Which way is Apple’s reputation going these days ? Up ? hmm… don’t think so.

Gerald Shields

on 02 Nov 10

Let’s be honest: All of those crash reports that go to Apple concerning Flash; the zero day attacks; heck, those times when you hear the CPU fan ramp up to cool down from playing a Adobe Flash video and/or game. Moreover, even Google and YouTube is playing this both ways, on one hand supporting Flash and, but heavily hyping HTML5. In short, a good decision by Apple. Besides, you can still install Flash Player.

Temcu

on 02 Nov 10

Quote:

Anonymous Coward 01 Nov 10

Also look at Microsoft, who literally saved Apple from bankruptcy by purchasing like 1/3 of all of it’s assets and injected $150 million into the business to then only be repaid by Steve Jobs…

End of quote.

Apple had about 1.5 billion dollar cash that time.
Of course, you do not want to know that, therefore you can post stupid opinion.

Michael Harper

on 02 Nov 10

Let’s have a quick recap to set the bar straight on Flash as a video standard. First, Flash is not the video king and it is not a standard! It wasn’t until they began using an industry standard CODEC that Flash became so ubiquitous. Until they used the H.264 CODEC in the Flash spec it just plain sucked. Here’s a test for ya to prove it. Swap .flv extension for .m4v extension on the file and play – it works. Why? Because Flash had to adopt a better “open” standard to survive. What’s more, Apple championed .mp4/.m4v in all their products years previous to Adobe’s decision on H.264 and quietly put QT in the background. They forced the hand on video format and have masterfully guided its adoption with hardware and software. So, in effect, Apple has also won and continues to win the video battle. They don’t have to have QT in front since QT is completely MPEG-4 compliant. They’ll do the same with Flash vs HTML 5 and will win – it’s good for the Web as well as Internet-based apps.

Jason

on 02 Nov 10

Adobe is NOT betting on Flash

Sencha is about to throttle Adobe Flash

Adobe KNOWS its days are numbered

The functionality that Flash provides should not be restricted to a plugin and owned by one company (who has actually been very lazy and produced buggy plugins and mistreated many developers)

Jason

on 02 Nov 10

Don’t forget Android is NOT free

It is a platform for owning person data and selling ads.

Android could actually win and get its talons into everything.

Apple only owns 4% of he market

Tiny

You people blindly supporting Google are …. blind.

AdamC

on 02 Nov 10

Everyone has a choice and Apple is not forcing anyone to do what they are doing so go figure.

Charles

on 02 Nov 10

When did not supporting some technology mean that you are trying to kill it? Apple doesn’t like flash because it can’t perform. Blu-ray’s licensing costs are so high that Apple feels it’s customers get better value without it. Java costs them a lot of resources to maintain, yet there are no consumer apps written with it. USB3? I’m not sure no that yet, but it’s still new enough that chipsets may not be optimized or something. I’m not 100% sure the the speed is needed in most cases.

For Apple to be actively trying to kill these technologies they’d have to be trying to prevent other companies from using them too and Apple isn’t doing that at all. This is just another non-story.

mech

on 02 Nov 10

You do not get it. Apple has but 1 version. To make the digital world a better space and it does not care who it offend so long as it remain true to its supporter and continue to make design decision they think is right. And to make such decision, I doubt they never consider everything.

As a Flash Developer and MAC OS user (love both), I must say Flash is buggy as hell.

I’ve been using it since 2004, and it could have been where no software is today. But it’s not.

It crashes a lot, it needs a lot of CPU to render some simple objects, while other plugins are able to render millions of objects (think Unity plugin).

I would be in the position to change my job if Flash would die, but it needs to be improved otherwise. And Apple has now put Adobe in a situation that sucks for them. It’s either to fix it, or to let Flash die.

Apple’s products on the other hand rock! They have some serious issues with the 3G iPhone since they upgraded the software, I wouldn’t want to think of what a CPU hog Flash would be.

Nathan

on 02 Nov 10

The only reason Apple did this is to push responsibility for Flash Player being out-of-date from themselves to the user. It has little to nothing to do with choosing to not allow Flash on iOS.

Andrew

on 02 Nov 10

@the author

The fact that you recently discovered the depths of Apple’s influence on the world of computing doesn’t mean that they Apple is suddenly starting to flex its muscles. A few examples (that I think we can thank Apple for):

- USB (which sat there, languishing, until Apple tossed serial ports to the wayside in the original iMac)
- Floppy drives (was there a less reliable media for saving data?)

Flash was a bandaid we used because the web couldn’t do what we wanted to yet. We were willing (eager?) to let Adobe thrash our CPU’s, memory, cooling fans, batteries, and hard drives because at least we could get things done on the web. As that finally changes, it’s time to start ripping that bandaid off.

Also: the fact that Apple is no longer including Flash with Mac OS X reflect THE REST OF THE INDUSTRY. Neither Windows nor any strain of Linux I know of ships with Flash pre-installed. I wouldn’t want that responsibility either.

Ian

on 02 Nov 10

I don’t care what Apple says. They have less than 10% computer market share. It’s nothing. 90% is Microsoft, and they have no problem to Adobe Flash. I just simply don’t care what Apple says.

Brett

on 02 Nov 10

“Anonymous Coward” perpetuates the myth that Microsoft, out of the goodness of its heart, saved Apple by making a $150 million stock purchase.

Actually Apple still had a few billion in the bank when that went down. And that transaction was part of a complex settlement agreement for a legal case in which Microsoft was about to be found guilty of illegally incorporating Apple’s QuickTime code in Windows Media Player.

More important than the stock purchase was the fact that Jobs and Gates agreed to bury the hatchet. They cross-licensed each other’s patents. Microsoft promised ongoing releases of Office on the Mac for at least five years, and Apple would ship Internet Explorer as its default web browser. Both companies benefitted.

“I’m a Mac” advertisements aside (which were funny because they mostly rang true), Microsoft and Apple have actually gotten along well since Job’s return. Apple has licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync to be compatible with Exchange Server, and provided Bootcamp supporting the installation of Windows on Macs (for those who desire it). Apple has diversified their products to focus on end-user consumers while largely ceding the enterprise market to Microsoft.

Edwin

on 03 Nov 10

Apple was a great underdog and is a crappy overlord.

Selling a computer that has final say over the software you can run on it is a non-starter.

Bradley Umbaugh

on 03 Nov 10

I know the point of this post is about Apple, not really Flash, but all of this “Real Web Developer” stuff isn’t helpful or constructive, David. Flash is being used by countless organizations to solve interesting problems in innovative ways, and it’s also unfortunately being used in many contexts where it shouldn’t. HTML is similarly a useful and productive tool with broad applicability.

Pinata beating is the problem, here: as long as we’re taking turns swinging the stick and diving for candy, we’re not speaking rationally about the subject at hand. How about a little of the democratic spirit? Let’s stop acting like fear-mongering politicians and choose the right tool for the job.

Delford

on 03 Nov 10

@Bradley Umbaugh … You just said exactly what I was thinking. I’ve been following this blog for a while, but lately I’ve been getting quite tired of the Apple Fanboyism and attitudes like “Real Web Developer.” To me, your statement about an appropriate time and place for Flash is absolutely correct.

RJ Owen

on 03 Nov 10

Wait – Apple stopped bundling Flash…so why does that mean Flash is dead / dying? Apple wants to spend less time supporting other people’s products and more time/money on their own…what’s so wrong with that?

Java, Blu-Ray, etc. etc. will be just fine without being bundled on Apple. The day they stop SUPPORTING Flash is the day you can write this post, David; until then I kinda think you’re just baiting the hype to draw attention to 37signals.

But wait, this just in: Apple doesn’t bundle a bookmark to Basecamp in Safari. GRAB THE SHOVELS – BASECAMP IS DEAD!